The researchers’ findings may also provide a key starting point for the development of new diagnostic tools for prostate cancer. Currently, when patients are diagnosed with prostate cancer, it is almost impossible for doctors to determine if the disease will advance quickly and therefore require aggressive treatment, or whether the tumors will remain slow-growing, necessitating a wait-and-see approach. “This study could enhance our ability to develop new, diagnostic markers for prostate cancer,” says Dr. Rubin. “We can also imagine eventually developing more personalized diagnostic tools for patients with recurrent tumors, to essentially follow the tumors’ progression by testing for new genomic alterations.”

Although the researchers’ findings need to be studied further and extended to larger numbers of tumor samples, this initial analysis has opened up many new avenues of investigation, underscoring the power of applying whole genome sequencing to cancer.

“Many of these features were invisible before,” says Dr. Garraway. “Now, we’re realizing that by sequencing whole genomes in prostate cancer, there’s a lot more to see. These discoveries are teaching us a great deal about prostate cancer biology that we simply hadn’t appreciated previously.”

Co-authors of the study include Dr. Francesca Demichelis (lead author), Raquel Esgueva, Kyung Park, Dorothee Pflueger, Naoki Kitabayashi, and Theresa Y. MacDonald from Weill Cornell; Michael F. Berger (lead author), Michael S. Lawrence (lead author), Kristian Cibulskis, Andrey Y. Sivachenko, Carrie Sougnez, Robert Onofrio, Scott L. Carter, Lukas Habegger, Lauren Ambrogio, Timothy Fennell, Melissa Parkin, Gordon Saksena, Douglas Voet, Alex H. Ramos, Trevor J. Pugh, Jane Wilkinson, Sheila Fisher, Wendy Winckler, Scott Mahan, Kristin Ardlie, Jennifer Baldwin, Stacey B. Gabriel, Todd R. Golub, Matthew Meyerson, Eric S. Lander and Gad Getz from The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT; Yotam Drier (lead author) from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel; Andrea Sboner and Mark B. Gerstein from Yale University; Jonathan W. Simons from the Prostate Cancer Foundation, Santa Monica, Calif.; and Philip W. Kantoff and Lynda Chin from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Funding for the project was provided by the Prostate Cancer Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the Kohlberg Foundation, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Prostate Cancer SPORE grant, and the Starr Cancer Consortium.

Dr. Mark Rubin is the co-inventor of the discovery of looking at prostate cancer in the context of the TMPRSS2-ETS rearrangement.  Dr. Rubin’s discovery has been used in this study, and Dr. Rubin receives royalties from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which has licensed his discovery to Gen-Probe Incorporated and Ventana Medical Systems, Inc.  In addition, Dr. Mark Rubin serves as a consultant for Gen-Probe Incorporated and Ventana Medical Systems, Inc.

Weill Cornell Medical College
Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University’s medical school located in New York City, is committed to excellence in research, teaching, patient care and the advancement of the art and science of medicine, locally, nationally and globally. Physicians and scientists of Weill Cornell Medical College are engaged in cutting-edge research from bench to bedside, aimed at unlocking mysteries of the human body in health and sickness and toward developing new treatments and prevention strategies. In its commitment to global health and education, Weill Cornell has a strong presence in places such as Qatar, Tanzania, Haiti, Brazil, Austria and Turkey. Through the historic Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, the Medical College is the first in the U.S. to offer its M.D. degree overseas. Weill Cornell is the birthplace of many medical advances - including the development of the Pap test for cervical cancer, the synthesis of penicillin, the first successful embryo-biopsy pregnancy and birth in the U.S., the first clinical trial of gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease, and most recently, the world’s first successful use of deep brain stimulation to treat a minimally conscious brain-injured patient. Weill Cornell Medical College is affiliated with New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where its faculty provides comprehensive patient care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. The Medical College is also affiliated with the Methodist Hospital in Houston. For more information, visit weill.cornell.edu.

Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT was launched in 2004 to empower this generation of creative scientists to transform medicine. The Broad Institute seeks to describe all the molecular components of life and their connections; discover the molecular basis of major human diseases; develop effective new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics; and disseminate discoveries, tools, methods and data openly to the entire scientific community.

Founded by MIT, Harvard and its affiliated hospitals, and the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe L. Broad, the Broad Institute includes faculty, professional staff and students from throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond, with collaborations spanning over a hundred private and public institutions in more than 40 countries worldwide. For further information about the Broad Institute, go to http://www.broadinstitute.org.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (http://www.dana-farber.org) is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States. It is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), designated a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute. It provides adult cancer care with Brigham and Women’s Hospital as Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center and it provides pediatric care with Children’s Hospital Boston as Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center. Dana-Farber is the top ranked cancer center in New England, according to U.S.News & World Report, and one of the largest recipients among independent hospitals of National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health grant funding.

###

Source: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center/Weill Cornell Medical College